Left Behind–the upcoming single-player expansion for acclaimed PlayStation 3 action game The Last of Us–will feature some “extremely challenging fights,” developer Naughty Dog said today. Developers explain in a new PlayStation Blog video that while the Left Behind DLC will place a stronger emphasis on exploration and non-combat experiences, the combat you will encounter will be seriously tough.
“You’ll have some extremely challenging fights. In fact, some of those fights will be showcasing some new features that we’ve added to the combat,” lead game designer Jacob Minkoff said.
One of the new combat features, “multi-faction combat,” will allow protagonists Ellie and Riley to pit human enemies against the infected. You can do this without ever getting immediately involved through actions like throwing a bottle near a human to encourage a Clicker to attack the human.
Minkoff also said that Left Behind will match up well and even exceed, at least from a narrative standpoint, the main Last of Us campaign.
“With Left Behind, we wanted to make a single-player DLC that was as fully crafted as our main campaign,” he said. “There’s a great deal that we’ve done with the DLC that exceeds the level of narrative density that we had in the main campaign.”
The expansion will also feel “playful” compared to the main game, Naughty Dog said earlier this month. It is set before the events of The Last of Us and will introduce players to the “real” Ellie and focus on her interactions with her friend Riley.
Left Behind, which represents the first single-player DLC 
has ever created for any game, launches on February 14–Valentine’s Day. It is included with the $20 The Last of Us DLC season pass and can purchased separately. The Last of Us was one of the few titles Sony demonstrated this month during CES 2014 running on the company’s new PlayStation Now streaming service, which goes into beta later this month.
